


within the beating, blessed (aching, rising; hand in hand)

by hitlikehammers



Series: Cardiophilia Sequence [8]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 5+1 Things, Cardiophilia, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff, Heartbeat Kink, Human Anatomy, Hurt/Comfort, Love, M/M, Mentions of Previous Drug Use, Pulsepoint Kink, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-12
Updated: 2013-02-12
Packaged: 2017-11-29 01:33:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/681182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times John happily indulged Sherlock's strange infatuation with his heartbeat despite his failure to comprehend the fixation, plus one time where John found he understood it rather perfectly.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	within the beating, blessed (aching, rising; hand in hand)

**Author's Note:**

> Follows **[suddenly your heart showed me my way](http://archiveofourown.org/works/411375)** , **[the beat and beating heart](http://archiveofourown.org/works/422019/chapters/704161)** , **[your heart in the lightning (and the thunder that follows)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/446596)** , **[echoes through the caverns of a chest (the give and take)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/450331)** , **[i'd trade your fading heart (for the flailing beats in mine)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/461462/chapters/795460)** , **[i am tired, beloved (of chafing my heart against the want of you)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/523584/chapters/926410)** , and **[all the jagged edges (of the broken heart made whole)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/547533/chapters/974935)** , but stands on its own.
> 
>  
> 
> My abiding thanks to **[speak_me_fair](http://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair/)** for the Britpicking, the beta-work, and the push to give this thing a more-deserving title. Likewise, my love to **[togoboldly](http://togoboldly.livejournal.com)** for loving this fic more than makes any sense, and helping me to love it, too.

They’re wrapping the splint when John picks up on the sound of soles scuffing against the tile, somewhere beyond the curtain; back and forth, back and forth, the cadence and the weight in each footfall familiar, near like his own skin.

“I told you it was a textbook Rolando Fracture, you berk,” John calls out through the thin veil separating him from his partner as the nurse rips the tape and tucks it close against his broken thumb; the pacing stops, but there’s a tangible tension that reaches, that splays like a hand and trembles, and John huffs out a sigh.

“You’re free to go,” the nurse tells him softly, the words murmured under her breath as she cocks her head toward where Sherlock is waiting, her smile knowing. “Looks like you’ve got someone waiting to lend a hand.”

“Thanks,” John nods, grins ruefully as he tests the unharmed digits on his right hand and drapes his jackets across his left elbow, uninterested in the trial of working his awkward limb through the sleeves just now. He’s much more keen to brush through the privacy curtain and tend to his no-doubt-harried detective.

“See?” John asks as he steps out, holding up his thumb; as Sherlock comes into his line of vision, his posture rigid, his eyes too wide. “No asymptomatic internal bleeding or whatever it was you were—”

John stops speaking as soon as Sherlock’s palms frame his face and pull him close, seek in his eyes the truth of his words and more essential, more soothing than any words or depth of sight, his fingertips seek John’s carotid pulse on either side of his neck: delicate, careful, but practiced, still as his blinking aligns to John’s pulse and his breathing slows, his own pupils dilate and stop shivering frantically around his sclera. John had told him, of course, that there was nothing to worry about, that he’d be absolutely fine, but if John had learned anything about the man he so adored, it was that for all his love of logic, when it came to John Watson, Sherlock was less than eager to follow the rational course.

“John,” Sherlock exhales, the stiffness in him bleeding into the air, making it too thick to breathe for just a second, just a space; the worry held tight in his expression loosens all at once and lets his features crumble in, makes his chest heave sharply with the volume of it, the holding in before release and John breathes steady, John leaves his own blood to run as it ought while Sherlock’s finds north and orients back to a beat that makes sense, a world that rings true.

John breathes, and counts in time with his own beating heart as Sherlock settles—fifty-seven, fifty-eight; John breathes, and brushes the hair from Sherlock’s forehead with his unbandaged hand, trails his fingers down Sherlock’s cheek and waits.

Waits, for as long as he needs to.

And John, well, he’s not sure he understands Sherlock’s fascination with the pumping of his heart above all others, more than the countless other tells of life or being he could choose, the myriad more fascinating subjects he may have selected to fixate upon and hold so closely; John’s not sure he quite gets it, really, but he doesn’t have to.

Sherlock breathes out again, long and slow before he presses lips to John’s forehead, holds, and then to John’s lips, hard and warm, and no, it isn’t at all necessary for John to understand it.

If it’s what Sherlock needs, John’s happy to oblige. 

 

_____________________________________________________

 

“Anderson, out,” Lestrade had instructed after three minutes of silence from Sherlock, whose mouth was just parted, ready to speak and yet preempted. Anderson puts up a token argument, but the complaints are made in retreat as he moves to leave, and John has to hand it to the Met really: they’re learning.

“Lestrade,” Sherlock barks, ten more minutes in; tone accusatory, just this side of caustic.

“I’m not _thinking_!’ Greg insists, but in the face of Sherlock’s stare, he breaks, and closes his eyes, breathes slowly; John can imagine the images of beaches, perhaps, or forests swimming in Greg’s mind as he tries to clear it, make it unintrusive. John fights a smirk, lest he incur his partner’s disdain any sooner than necessary. 

“John,” Sherlock speaks another seven minutes into the quiet, and John braces himself for the shallow rush of irritation, something coloured in the same family as hurt but not exactly, not the right shade—he waits, and it doesn’t come, so he sighs as he fights a smile because Sherlock is imbedded in his very bones, runs in veins, now, and John understands his lover’s need for stillness, for peace to retreat to his Palace, to organise his facts.

“Right,” John answers, nods, and moves to follow Anderson out the door.

“No,” Sherlock cuts him off, voice sharp, his contradiction quick. “No, come here.”

And again, John is reminded, that even the blood in his veins can sometimes surprise him.

“Sherlock, you’ve already had me look at the body,” John reminds him, never knows what gets deleted, which chambers get demolished and rebuilt as empty rooms. “Asphyxiation, that’s the best I can give you.”

“Difficult as it may be for you to grasp, I can in fact recall a conversation that took place less than thirty minutes ago,” Sherlock sneers, but it’s not nearly as harsh as it can be, as it _should_ be, given Sherlock’s apparent difficulty in piecing together anything meaningful from the crime scene. “Shocking, I know.”

John, practiced as he is in handling Sherlock’s sarcasm, responds accordingly, and ignores the barb.

“You do realise that the treads on Nikes all look the same to me, right? That hasn’t changed?” John kneels, still unclear as to his purpose, yet being at Sherlock’s side is something he knows, will always know.

“Hmm,” Sherlock hums, vague, and John’s lucky his leg doesn’t bother him much anymore, because he has to fight for his balance as he starts, jumps a bit from the knee when Sherlock’s fingers curl around his wrist.

It’s not John’s training that lets him know what’s happening, that lets him recognise the position of Sherlock’s middle and index fingers at the snuffbox, the pads of each digit angled awkwardly, with intent. It’s not the fact that John’s taken a radial pulse at least once a day for most of his adult life that alerts him to the moment, the _meaning_ in the placement of that delicate, deep-rooted touch.

No, it’s more that Sherlock’s fingers often settle there. That John’s associated that touch with something that can only be termed affection. 

That in the recesses of his mind where he tries (and most likely fails) to hide his most sentimental musings, he equates Sherlock’s grasp on his wrist with the holding of hands, with the display of unity and feeling that he grew up seeking, the same connection that he sometimes still wakes and marvels at having discovered in this madman, this miracle of a human being.

Sherlock breathes in deep and exhales loudly for another sixty seconds before he sighs out breath in a way that curls his lips and brightens his eyes and tightens his grasp on John’s arm for an instant, possessiveness and gratitude at once before letting go, and John knows before Sherlock says it that he needs to add something new to his list, because the contact, the measuring of beats is more than affection and commitment and Sherlock’s fixation in the flesh.

It’s centring. It’s focusing. It’s the eye of a storm and it holds.

John is the eye of that infinite storm and for Sherlock Holmes, he _holds_ .

Sherlock's grin stretches farther as he rises, and walks past Lestrade. "Arrest the mother-in-law." 

And John grins too, as he follows Sherlock out. 

 

_____________________________________________________

Negligence, genetic modification, and export fraud all in a single go: interesting enough, for a common mind, only just this side of dull for his majesty, Detective Pompous Prick, but regardless, the case had proven damn near endless, by the close. John’s sorely tempted to call the blog _The Perpetual Plumcot Predicament_.

“No,” Sherlock snaps at him, massaging the bridge of his nose wearily from the window. “Your fondness for alliterations borders on the disturbing, you know.”

John swallows a cackle, washes it down with the last of his tea—as if _Sherlock_ , of all people, has any room to talk, though John won’t say it, won’t point it out just now because it’s far more absurd, far more incredible that Sherlock’s even _standing_ , that he’s _conscious_ and capable of forming words, let alone coherent sentences on less than three hours of sleep in the course of six days.

It’s inhuman, really, and it’s much more disturbing than John’s penchants in titling, if the unease in John’s stomach is anything to go by as he takes in the greyness of Sherlock’s complexion, the strain of thin skin around his mouth, his eyes. 

John feels a lurching in his chest, beneath the ribs, when he considers Sherlock’s posture, sees its resignation, recognises the curve of his spine as utterly bereft.

He crosses the room quietly, careful not to startle his lover as he stands in such a state, those elegant fingers cragged, bloodless as he grips the windowsill like a lifeline, as Sherlock trembles from his knees up to his wrists. Thankfully, John’s only seen Sherlock in such a state a handful of times before tonight; so exhausted, so overworked and overtaxed—physically and mentally, equally drained, the hard drive glitchy and locked and too frozen to sequence for reboot—that he can’t process anything, even the prospect of sleep

But John’s got an idea.

“Come to bed,” he murmurs, placing a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder and taking comfort in the way the man folds into the touch, rather than startling, rather than shying away.

“John,” Sherlock moans, his tone washed out, the syllables shaking now; he barely sounds like himself, and John aches with it. “I can’t, you know that I—”

“Trust me,” John whispers, smoothes a hand across Sherlock’s hair as he leans to press a kiss to Sherlock’s unresponsive mouth, too tired, too lost to reply, much like the rest of him as Sherlock fails to muster a fight, as John guides him into their bedroom, strips him, and manoeuvres him between the sheets.

“Settled?” John asks, fills space with sound as he slips in next to his partner and scoots in close to Sherlock’s boneless form.

“I told you,” Sherlock sighs, so strung out, so timid. “I _can’t_...”

Sherlock trails off as John wraps an arm around him, as John brings his body close and shifts so that Sherlock is pressed against him, skin flush against skin; so that Sherlock’s limp curls tickle the underside of John’s chin as his ear settles at the centre of John’s chest, still: safe.

“Shh,” John soothes, twining both arms around Sherlock’s shoulders and hugging him tight to John’s torso. “Close your eyes and try to relax, yeah?”

“John,” Sherlock exhales, and John’s slowly becoming addicted to the way his voice fills with wonder, the way John’s chest fills with a brilliant heat and his blood speeds brilliantly, buoyantly to hear it, to have Sherlock hear _John_ , the simplest, most basic bit of him, and for him, of all people, to _marvel_. “Oh, _John_.”

And Sherlock, he listens, he sinks heavy and low into John’s skin and John’s bones; and when that shallow breathing deepens, evens out, John can’t fight the smile that ushers him into his own long-awaited sleep.

_____________________________________________________

Just because they’re less frequent, just because John doesn’t need Mycroft to warn him of the risk; just because John Watson is head-over-heels in love with his flatmate, who it seems is in just as deep, doesn’t mean Sherlock Holmes is any less prone to his black moods now and again.

John hears Sherlock’s footfalls on the stairs from where he sits with his book and he knows: tonight is a danger night.

He knows their flat is clean. Has been for months.

He also knows that Sherlock’s been gone four-and-a-half hours more than planned, and his gait is uneven, and John tries to tamp down the bile that threatens to surge up his throat when he realises what may have already occurred, what all the good intentions that John can offer or convey may be too late to stem, to save.

John fights to stay seated as Sherlock fumbles with the door, struggles to stare at the pages of his mystery novel—Sherlock-approved, suitable for training his brain in the art of observation. It’s a close thing, though.

It’s a very close thing. 

Sherlock says nothing as he stumbles across the room, throws himself onto the sofa, his breathing loud, laboured. John’s on his feet, at Sherlock’s side in an instant, and his own breath starts coming quicker, heavier, as he tries not to make a scene of looking up and down Sherlock’s arms for tells.

For tracks.

Before he can blink, before his gaze can stop at the rolled-up cuffs of Sherlock’s shirt there are hands on his thighs, setting him off-balance; before he can fight it, Sherlock’s got him draped across his body, chest to chest and holding firm, desperate. John’s hands brace against Sherlock’s forearms, massaging idly at the skin, from the lines of his knuckles to the crook of his elbow on either side as John recognises, as he picks up on the hammering thrum of a rhythm, a drumbeat against his sternum from the wrong side, a heart against his heart, reaching and begging, _needing_.

John feels his own heart as secondary, suddenly, and knows with absolute certainty that Sherlock’s experiencing the same in reverse—knows, and presses their bodies together all the more tightly.

John breathes, and Sherlock breathes, and both their hearts beat like the world’s about to end, and it’s only later, much later, that John realises that the arms he’s running his fingers up and down are smooth, are clean.

Thank God.

_____________________________________________________

 

“He’s going to be fine,” John tells Sherlock as he emerges from the labyrinth of exam rooms into the waiting area.

“You can’t know—” Sherlock protests, still refusing to look at John, though he’s listening, now, acknowledging, which is progress. 

“Actually, I can,” John insists, taking Sherlock by the shoulders and stilling his jittering, his pacing-by-halves, uncoordinated, unfinished, “and you could too, you know, if you’d take a minute to _breathe_.”

John catches Sherlock’s gaze and holds it, wills him to inhale properly, and it takes an unblinking moment before Sherlock heaves a shuddering breath.

“It was a graze,” John assures him, rubbing up and down Sherlock’s arms, swift and cursory, because Sherlock doesn’t like to be coddled in public, not unless he initiates it, but John knows he’ll ease at contact, the touch; that his frenzied gasping will steady if John just _stays_ and _holds_. “Bled like mad, but he’ll be good as new. Sore,” John qualifies, clarifies honestly as Sherlock’s body betrays him, jerks in protest; “and laid up for a bit, but he’s already looking at it as an overdue holiday.” John chuckles lightly, sobers a bit when Sherlock stills, eyes glazed, staring through John, past him. “Too short of one, but that’s for the best, given the givens.”

Sherlock’s breathing’s a bit slower, a bit deeper, but he still doesn’t give, and John can’t have that, won’t settle for it.

“Which you’d _know_ ,” John nags him, half-fond, part-desperate, “if you just went back and _talked_ to him.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “The suspect—”

“Has been taken into custody,” John counters, refusing to be swayed, refusing to let Sherlock fall into his own mind, not now. “Thanks to you,”

John watches Sherlock blink rapidly, watches his throat work too quickly, too hard. “If I had been quicker...”

“Stop,” John braces his hands on the planes of Sherlock’s chest. “This is not your fault.” He tries to catch Sherlock’s eyes once more and can’t, so he reaches, eases Sherlock’s chin toward him, coaxes that gaze up until it follows, until it comes. “This is in no possible way _your fault_.”

“Greg’s a professional,” John reasons, offers the simple truth. “He knows the risks of the job, and he accepts them.” John runs his hand now up and down the line of Sherlock’s jaw, let’s Sherlock look away as he needs to. “And he will continue to accept them when he’s back in top form.”

Sherlock is silent, liminal. John fights the urge to sigh.

“He said that bullet would have likely hit an artery if you hadn’t been there to throw that bastard off his aim,” John continues, softly now, closer. “You saved his life,” and he does his best to show his pride, his fucking glowing, overwhelming _pride_ in the person he loves, in the man that Sherlock _is_ , and there’s a softening in his lover in response, a loosening, and he looks all the more fragile for it, all the more prone to cracking.

And Sherlock, standing there, the whole height of him, the heft of him diminished, looking so small in his coat and so lost in his eyes; Sherlock, the sight of him before John now like this: Sherlock breaks John just as he always rebuilds him. 

John’s hands reach out of their own accord, his fingers lacing between Sherlock’s and it’s instinct, almost, when John gathers Sherlock’s palms to his chest, holds them there and inhales, exhales, watches as some of the tension bleeds from Sherlock’s muscles, watches as he deflates and bends and allows for John to hold him up, to keep him whole as he falls, as he shatters just a bit and gasps, just a little wet around the edges as his eyes slide closed and John can feel his own heartbeat for how hard Sherlock is clinging to him, for how close John’s holding him, and oh, but if John can have this for the rest of his life, if he can shelter Sherlock Holmes and know his warmth, keep safe his softness, then Christ, John will die a happy man.

He kisses the corner of Sherlock’s lips. 

Yes.

A _very_ happy man.

_____________________________________________________

Adrenaline. Focus. Norepinephrine. Cortisol. Terror. John’s no stranger to these feelings, these particular brands of fire raging in his blood.

But he’s never, not once—neither in the operating room, nor on the battlefield; he’s _never_ felt such thunder in his chest, such lightning in his veins—he’s never been so indisputably wretched, at the mercy of devastation and devotion and _loss_ as he is from the moment he watches Sherlock at the edge of the river; hears the crack of a firearm and witnesses the body he knows and adores, reveres and requires as it falls, formless and inelegant, into the rushing waters.

John tries to blink and process anything beyond the deafening pounding of his heart, of the valvular vibrations, but he can’t. Time passes, and he stares, and there is blackness and he’s frantic, and he’s breathing heavily, too fast and the edges of his vision are bright, but he can’t stop, he can’t swallow, he can’t—

It may have been moments, or minutes, or more: but when his fractured vision converges, it does so upon the sight of black against blackness, the silhouette of something from the nothing, and it is familiar, it is solid, and John might be dreaming, or hallucinating, or just another pitiable victim of his own heart’s needs, but he can’t help it. He stares, and he _yearns_ , and he stops breathing as his blood makes to run from him, to tear from his veins and wrench free.

“Sherlock!” he cries out, and he couldn’t have disguised the ruination, the hope, the first breaths of relief in lungs that had already sought to shrivel, to hide from respiration for the burn of it, for the sting of a world without, without—

The figure turns, and his eyes are bright against the dusk, in the moonlight and the street lamps and the shine of the chase, and John’s heart stutters in his chest and he chokes on his own inhalations and he has to brace himself for a moment, just a moment on the railings near the dock before he runs, sprints to where Sherlock, his Sherlock stands dripping, drenched, emerged from the waters of certain death.

“Jesus,” John breathes out, shaky, his hands trembling madly as he takes stock, as he makes certain that the bullet didn’t pierce that perfect skin before he pushes Sherlock’s sodden coat from his shoulders, tears open the jacket beneath and the shirt from its buttons under that and presses close, so close to stay the shivers wracking that impossible frame, to warm from the centre out and keep his own bones from quaking.

“Sherlock,” and it’s almost a moan, it’s almost a plea and a prayer and maybe it’s almost nothing, maybe it is entirely these things, all things, and when Sherlock wraps his wet, sleeve-clad arm around John’s shoulders and holds him close, John doesn’t think twice about nuzzling against Sherlock’s body, doesn’t mind the wetness, the stench of the Thames on Sherlock’s clothes because he can smell _Sherlock_ still beneath it.

Because the dampness hides the sting, the salt, the heat that escapes his own eyes, that adds to the water clinging to those fibres, that skin.

“Never,” John gasps into the hollow of Sherlock’s throat, and he has to swallow a sudden, sharp sob when his lips graze Sherlock’s too-cool skin—too cool but warming, God, yes, _warming_ —just as his blood beats hard between the clavicles. 

“Never do that again,” John whispers, and relishes the shiver—this of a different quality, indicative of a wellbeing, a recognition that makes John’s chest loosen, just a tad—that runs down Sherlock’s spine. “Don’t you _ever_ do that to me again.”

Something wicked and violent drains out of John as Sherlock’s trembling slows, fades and he stands still, but makes no move to pull from John; if anything, holds tighter, until their heat and their breath and their blood, their very hearts thrum true, in time. John sinks into Sherlock bodily, now, less steady and more dependent, his knees weak as his chest slips low against Sherlock’s ribs and his head falls to the line of Sherlock’s sternum, and it’s not something John plans for, or thinks to expect, and yet in clinging to Sherlock he gets it anyway; in holding to the man he thought lost, and his own self lost in kind, John hears it. John feels it against his cheek and knows its echo in his ear and the pressure when it moves and oh.

Oh.

“John,” Sherlock says his name, and it sounds heavenly, sinful ringing through that chest, around the gasp-hiss of his expanding lungs, between the twin-sounds of that beautiful _beating_ , and John presses himself inward, tighter, fuller, frantic, _needing_ —

“John?”

“You’re all right,” John murmurs into Sherlock’s chest as he takes Sherlock’s wrists in hand and measures the belated beat there, the pump that fills the gap within the sound, the perfect, breathtaking symphony of filling and impulse, contraction and release and John’s dizzy for a moment, just listening to Sherlock’s heart, that heart that’s always been there, that John’s heard before and yet never like this, it’s never _sounded_ like this, it’s never _felt_ like the world being born _ex nihilo_ from the void into being, into all things, into John’s body and his mind and his heart, oh fuck, his own heart is about to leap out of his throat and he doesn’t care, he doesn’t even care, he wouldn’t look twice because Sherlock, Sherlock—

“Thank God, you’re all right,” John breathes against the top of Sherlock’s heart, through the bones and skin and blood, straight against the aorta and yes, thank God, thank every god and devil, every force in the universe at large that this heart is here and moving and perfect and _John’s_ , oh, _God_.

Sherlock’s hands are moving, dancing up and down John’s back, coaxing, calling John to himself enough to recognise the words leaving his mouth, a mantra, nigh-hysterical.

“I love you,” John mumbles, murmurs. “I love you, I love you, I love—”

“Shh,” Sherlock whispers against the shell of his ear, kisses the tender skin there before burying his face in John’s hair. “Shh, it’s all right, love,” and that voice through that chest is exquisite, and John feels on the verge of epiphany. 

“I’m fine,” Sherlock murmurs against John’s hairline, and his heart sings it, strong and steady, and John feels the curl of Sherlock’s lips against his head. “Better than fine, even.”

“Yes,” John agrees, blinks, listens to the beating, lets it lull him, centre him, focus him, soothe him, protect and caress and keep him—joyous, almost, and so very _alive_.

“Yes,” John agrees, wonders, and something slides into place, something clicks and all the things that hadn’t mattered in making no sense suddenly make perfect sense, suddenly take on a significance that sticks in John’s throat, that holds solid and heavy, simultaneously light and so warm in John’s chest. 

“You’re,” and John looks up and sees in Sherlock’s eyes a question, a contentedness, as if the answer is unnecessary, is not needed. “Yes. Right.” 

And when John smiles, Sherlock smiles, and Sherlock’s heart beats on, so John’s can; and John’s sings, so that Sherlock’s endures, and John, well.

John suddenly, unexpectedly—inevitably—understands perfectly.


End file.
